Medical catheters such as guide catheters are utilized in a wide variety of interventional procedures to facilitate advancement of therapeutic devices to target locations within the body. In applications involving the neurovasculature, for example, such devices can be used in conjunction with a guidewire to advance an endovascular coil, atherectomy catheter, drug delivery catheter, or other such therapeutic device to select vascular regions within the body to treat vascular disease.
In certain applications, it may be desirable to impart a particular shape to the catheter tip to facilitate tracking of the catheter through tortuous anatomy, or to advance the catheter beyond a lesion or other obstruction within the body. In the treatment of aneurysms, for example, such shaped catheter tips can be used to reach select vascular regions within the body such as the anterior communicating artery or the posterior communicating artery. Once positioned, such tip shapes can also be used to maintain the stability of the catheter at the site of the aneurysm by using the tip shape to stabilize a portion of the catheter body against the vessel wall while maintaining the tip at the site of the aneurysm.
Shaping of catheter tips is typically accomplished in a clinical or surgical setting by bending the tip manually to a desired shape, and then setting the shape within the aid of shaping equipment. In a steam-shaping process, for example, the shape of the catheter tip is typically formed by the physician bending the tip to a particular shape and then steaming the tip to impart the desired shape. While a number of different shapes can be formed in this manner, such techniques often require the physician to perform additional steps in preparation for the procedure, thus increasing the time required to perform the interventional procedure. Moreover, the efficacy of such techniques is often dependent on the skill of the physician and the precision of the equipment employed.